Thursday, October 04, 2012

On Not Being A Vegetarian Anymore

*I haven't found the right place to publish this piece, so I figured I might as well post it on ye olde blogge.

When
I was 17 years old, I stopped eating meat. It wasn’t because I’d seen PETA2
stickers with illustrations of cute pigs platered on the stalls of the girl’s
bathroom. It wasn’t because I’d read an offputting book like Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation (Jonathan Safran Foer’s
Eating Animals hadn’t been published
yet). It wasn’t even because I wanted to lose weight and chose to restrict my
diet in an excusable way. No, it was because my best friend called me the
evening to let me that she had decided to go vegetarian and tthat I should too.
But instead of laughing it off and saying “Nahhh, I’m going to stick with meat!
Sorry!” I decided I was up for a challenge, and agreed to it. My best friend’s
vegetarianism lasted about two months – seven years later I was still saying no
to edibles that had once been alive.

My
first few weeks of vegetarianism were strange and unfamiliar. Never before had
I restricted my diet, and I was forced to negotiate which items were “safe” to
eat and which weren’t. Was it okay to eat the leftover Chinese food if I picked
the chicken out of it? It was almost like having a food allergy to meat and I
decided what risks were worth taking for the sake of getting fed. After one
month I craved meat so badly that I asked my mom to go into McDonald’s and buy
me a Big Mac so I wouldn’t have to go inside and face my friends who worked
there suspect that something fishy (beefy?) was up with my diet. Eating a Big
Mac was one of the single worst restaurant experiences of my life. It was soft,
like sinking your teeth into carbohydrate-flavoured silly putty tasted so awful
that my vegetarianism was cemented for the very, very long time.

A
few years prior to my dietary switch, I was the terrible kind of picky eater
whose mom was willing to cook a pepper steak for breakfast before school just
to get me to eat. Not bacon and eggs, straight up steak. Even with such carnivorous
tastes, it was strangely easy for me to forgo meat. After the Big Mac Fiasco of
2006, I didn’t miss it at all. As an only child, my parents didn’t have other
siblings to contend with at mealtimes, so vegetarian became the standard. My
dad started to purchase smoked pork hocks from the butcher and hoard them in
fridge, slicing off hunks at mealtimes to supplement the paltry, meat-free
meals he was forced to eat.

Eventually
I went away to University, and nothing really changed besides my social life
and alcohol consumption levels. By the time I moved into my own apartment with
roommates, I already been a vegetarian for three years. I was an adept cook and
feeding myself wasn’t hard. I shared food with my roommates and cooked a lot of
delicious vegetable curries and homemade pizza. As an Environmental Studies
major, I learned about the carbon footprint of meat production and learned new
ways of justifying my diet to myself and others. I was healthy and maybe even
happy.

But
then I graduated University and realized I was no longer close with the people
I once shared every single meal with. I could feel a sea change swelling up
within me, even though we humans are already more than 60% water. I decided I
wanted to be open to every opportunity and embrace all aspects of life, even
something as small as opening a menu and being able to order anything I damn
well please. I went to brunch at Lady Marmalade with a good friend and decided
to order the eggs benedict with brie, avocado and bacon. The rest is history, I
guess.

Now
I linger at the deli section of the grocery store without feeling guilt. I can
peruse through the sections of my Betty Crocker cookbook that remained previously
unexplored. In the past month I have discovered $3 banh mi, eaten pork
dumplings, prosciutto and ordered sandwiches at Tim Hortons that weren’t egg
salad (I always hated egg salad). I am overwhelmed by the variety of options of
food there are available in this world. But with all this freedom it is harder
than ever to make a choice about what to eat for dinner.

For
dinner tonight, I bought a rotisserie chicken and ate it with my bare hands. I
felt like Fred Flinstone, a cartoon barbarian in a ragged leopard-print toga
gnawing away at the fleshy carcass. But despite this obvious display, I felt a
deeper more primeval urge come to life as I gnawed on bones and gouged dark
meat out of the juicy crevices of the roasted bird. For the first time in
years, I felt what it was like to survive. Obviously buying a rotisserie
chicken is vastly different than raising, slaughtering, plucking and preparing
a chicken on my own but I respected that chicken deeply, even though I chose to
devour it.

They
(scientists?) say that every seven years all of your skin cells completely
regenerate and technically you become a completely new person. That is me
today, in regards to both my skin and my newfound diet.

25 comments:

me too. i was vegetarian for roughly 12 years and 2 years ago decided to bring the meat back. not to say i eat meat daily buuuuuut, well, i devoured a lamb burger tonight and fucking loved it (although, in all fairness, it may have had more to do with the goat cheese than the lamb).

You "repect" a chicken that you ate? ...You can't respect something that you pay to be killed and cooked for your consumption. It's oxymoronic.That is typical carnist language. I'm sure you've seen clips of animals being abused in factory farms. Who hasn't? But people just turn away in disgust. So if it's not good enough for your eyes, how is it good enough for your stomach? I just don't understand why people hear about animal cruelty in the meat/dairy/egg industries, and then just push it aside like it doesn't matter. And they just say "outta sight, outta mind" and move on with their lives. I don't think that's what life is about. I don't wanna support hate and violence, and I sure as hell am not going to consume it either. Especially when not doing so is unbelievably easy, healthy, and gratifying. But hey at least you feel like Fred Flinstone.

I was veg for 9 years and went back to eating meat in my 20's. I try to eat only meat that has been humanely raised and I do still sometimes feel as if what I'm doing isn't ethical. It's something I'm still struggling with and am mostly resigned to since my family is not veg and doesn't want to be...

7 years eh? I think your math's off by a year if you started at 17. :P I only made it to 5 years myself. It always made things so difficult at restaurants, and not being an only child, it made meals in general lacking in balance. My first taste of meat in over 5 years was a Big Mac on a haggered New Years Day, and after that I haven't really looked at them with the same lusting eyes as I used to. Disappointment, thy name is Big Mac.

@"Unknown" - You don't pay for the chicken to be killed and cooked for your consumption. You pay for the item. The chicken is killed and cooked long before the thought of eating a chicken even flourishes. It is an exchange of money for goods. There is nothing difficult to grasp there. Would you prefer that the product is created and then thrown out due to lack of demand? Psst, here's a secret: no matter how many people swear off meat to 'send a message' to food companies saying that meat ain't ok, they're still going to make it. You were never part of their target market anyway.

Remember, not all animal-based products are farmed in high-pressure, large-scale farming environments. How dare you even assume the animal products being consumed by anyone are of a particular calibre - all it does is show what a silly and close-minded person you are. I eat a small amount of organic, free-range meat from local farmers purchased at markets; same goes for milk and eggs. Same could possibly be said for a lot of people you otherwise brand "carnist". You don't have to consume "hate and violence" alongside products derived from animals.

Go educate yourself, speak to some local farmers, learn about rural economies and agriculture, and come back with a response that won't make me laugh at how stupid you are. Hurry!! I'm rolling my eyes so much I'm about to pass out

haha, don't you love the 'unknown' (too cowardly to put a face to their elitist vegan rant).

Also, unknown, you realise that most food you eat (meat or otherwise) comes from the labour of a living being. And indeed many of the clothes you wear, the plastics you buy, the shit you use every day. And many of those people are being exploited.

So perhaps when you start caring about people too and being as passionately arse-holish about that people will begin to take you seriously.

Isobel, I respect and understand where you are coming from. You're pretty cool and a pretty good person. Fuck anyone who thinks they have the right to tell you otherwise by berating you anonymously.

It takes a lot of courage to be open about leaving vegetarianism in a place with so many aggressive anti-meat activists (for the record, whom I respect, but get annoyed at regularly tbh). Ignore the comment above, what you put in your body is none of their business.I've gone through spells of being a vegan/vegetarian, but the fact is, it's bloody restricting. I also have a hard time believing that humans aren't supposed to eat meat. There is no real evidence (I mean REAL evidence). Apes brains started developing when they started eating meat. It seems logical that, like thousands of other animals, it is s part of our diet.

I've been vegetarian since reading 'Eating Animals' and I'm content with that choice. I know it's not my business but can I ask why you chose to eat meat again (despite your mentioning that you're aware of the environmental concerns of meat consumption)?

Wow, Isabel. Thank you for sharing that with us. I'm happy to hear that you're ok with eating meat again. It's a huge step to take.

I've recently started eating seafood and I was so drunk and hungry on Saturday night I ate a piece of chicken! Sometimes we attach so much of our identity to our diet it's traumatizing to not be able to identify yourself as "vegan", "vegetarian" or "omnivore". It's like you said once, food and diet are very personal things and can dictate a large part of who we are. The fact that you wrote about your experience says a lot about how you see yourself in relationship to food. This is a great post and it really opens up the dialogue for a great discussion on food politics.

To answer your question. I'm thinking of moving to Montreal before any other city because I want to learn French and do my Ph.D at McGill. Plus I know many people who have moved there for the music scene, and I'd like to explore that part of the culture in Montreal too.

I was once a vegetarian for a year when I was 14 or so...since having recently discovered a food intolerance I couldn't stand restricting what I can eat even more! It's too limiting, I have to eat something *sigh* so I totally understand where you're coming from with not being able to order anything

I'm a vegetarian and I can't imagine going back to eating meat, but it's true, you can never account for your future self.

For that reason it would've been really interesting if you went further into the reasons for your return to eating meat. I think it's an interesting question that I wish you'd explored more, especially since you noticed that switching to vegetarianism in the first place is so thoroughly accounted for. Unless you just changed your mind one day and that's all there is, which is fair enough I guess.

@ Carla, that anonymous post was assholish to be sure, but to state that the ideas that revolve around caring for animal life and caring for human life are mutually exclusive is pretty fucking bizarre. Especially since humans are exploited grossly in the production of most meat and dairy products, not to mention the by product of suffering in the form of asthma, autism and other woes. I certainly don't fault Isobel, I think she's super bad ass, but nobody who disagrees with Miss Unknown is coming off any better or any wiser.

interesting - but I think it really depends on the reason someone becomes vegetarian.

mine was because I just couldn't bear the texture of meatwhen I was eating it ... coupled with the realisation of whatit actually was I was eating. that was 12 years ago and that feeling is just as strong now as it was then.

Isobel, it's totally your choice what you eat and what you don't. I stopped eating meat 7 years ago and that's not because of animal cruelty, no, it is because it tastes like sponge. That kind of sponge you use for cleaning the dishes. But that's just my opinion. I have friends who don't even eat cheese because it has no meat in it, but there are some who say I'm a bad person because I have eaten a fish finger last week (It's more of a love-hate relationship). Everyones diet is different and that's good.

I'm a vegetarian, but not by choice. I dont care about animals or my diet, I'm just meataphobic. I can't be in a kitchen when its cooking or have it near me on the table. I have tried to eat meat and get over this, but I think ill be a veggie for life.